Chapter Text
If this had been any other day, B–15 knew exactly what she would have done.
She would have buckled on her helmet over her head, fastened the laces of her boots and tucked a Time Stick into her belt. She would have assembled a unit of the TVA’s finest soldiers and led them down to the branched timeline with the sole command to find Sylvie, the cause of all their troubles, and prune on sight. And once they had accomplished their mission, she would’ve had every last branch erased from existence, until only one Sacred Timeline remained on the screen of her TemPad.
But this was not those days anymore. The TVA wasn’t the same… and perhaps neither was she.
Because the old B–15 would have seen disaster as she stared out to the ever-branching timeline in front of her. But now, she felt only despair and complete powerlessness over being unable to help the billions of lives at stake.
Just three days ago, she would have been somewhere upstairs, carving one more tally onto her helmet with great pride after yet another successful day of hunting down Variants to protect the Sacred Timeline. But instead, she found herself standing in the depths of the TVA’s basement, tracing those very marking with her fingers. Each one she touched filled her heart with shame and guilt and grief, and reminded her of all the destruction she had once caused.
And the one thing the old B–15 would have never imagined would happen was that the day would come where she would feel even a hint of sympathy for the man she once thought nothing more than a cosmic mistake.
“Are you alright over there?”
There was a selection of chairs in the control room that overlooked the Temporal Loom, but for some reason Loki had chosen to seat himself on the floor, leaning back against the teal walls covered from top to bottom with brightly-coloured buttons and silver switches. B–15 had seen him there out the corner of her eye when she arrived, but it was only when she shifted her focus away from her thoughts that she noticed he didn’t look too well.
Loki had his eyes shut tightly and both hands massaging his temples. He didn’t seem to hear B–15. Or maybe he just didn’t think he was the one being addressed. But considering how their previous interactions had unfolded, B–15 perfectly understood why it might have been hard for him to believe she would be concerned over his wellbeing.
“Well,” Mobius replied without hesitation, his voice muffled by the heavy radiation helmet that was still over his head, “looks like I’m not losing my skin any time soon, so I’d say I’m doing pretty fine!”
“Mobius, I told you to stop moving!” O.B. complained, wrestling yet another jammed bolt off Mobius’ helmet with the silver wrench in his hand.
“I barely moved an inch,” Mobius grumbled. “And I had to turn around, it’s rude not to face people when they’re talking to you!”
“Is this conversation really more important than getting you out of this suit right now?” asked O.B.
“Well, it’s not like I’m in danger anymore. I mean, there’s no radiation in here, so there’s no need to hurry, right?”
“Eh,” O.B. shrugged, “not unless you run out of oxygen.”
“What?” Mobius’ eyes widened.
“But you’ve still got about twelve minutes.”
“And you’re just telling me this now?”
B–15 shook her head and turned back to Loki, who didn’t seem to mind the noisy bickering at the other side of the room at all.
“Hey, Loki,” she spoke calmly as she stepped closer. “Are you okay?”
Loki’s eyes shot open. Realizing he was being watched, he straightened his slouched shoulders and refrained himself as best he could from wincing with his every movement.
Because it turned out that ripping oneself from every thread of time and space all at once felt exactly as it sounded like.
It felt like his body had been torn apart, its fragments scattered across the stars, then crashed back together in a way that made his bones feel like they hadn’t slotted back together quite right. It felt like his mind was spinning violently, blurring the lines between his memories of the past and his knowledge of the present and his dreams of the future, and all those thoughts were threatening to burst his skull.
But Loki was not unfamiliar to pain. He knew pain in its every form. From the one that made his body ache, to the one that no soul besides his own could see. He could even say that pain had become somewhat of a constant companion of his in recent years.
He had grown so accustomed to it that he saw no need to share his burden. So, Loki did what he knew best and told a lie.
“I’m fine,” he simply said.
“Uh-huh,” said B–15, a tone of disbelief in her voice. “Weren’t you about to prune yourself last time I saw you?”
“I was,” he nodded, “and I did.”
“How did that go?”
“Splendid,” Loki offered a rather unconvincing smile. “No more time slipping.”
“I’ve never been pruned –thankfully–, so I can’t say I know what it feels like. But disintegrating yourself molecule by molecule sounds like it must be painful.”
“It’s really not that bad,” Loki dismissed.
B-15 sighed warily. “You know, after centuries of interrogating hundreds of variants a week, I think I know a lie when I hear one.” She pointed towards his bloodied, torn sleeve. “Besides, it’s not that hard to see that you’re injured.”
Loki shrugged. “It’ll heal faster than you’d expect.”
“But I don’t think your enhanced healing exempts you from feeling pain, does it?”
There was something about B–15’s demeanour that conflicted with the image Loki held of her in his mind. Her eyes seemed to shelter a newfound warmth behind what was once a cold, piercing glance, and her usual authoritative voice was now more soothing than commanding. And though it all appeared rather genuine, a part of him still struggled to believe it so.
When Loki failed to answer her question, B–15 held out a hand offering to help him up.
But Loki hesitated to take it, because a part of him still remembered receiving a few blows to the stomach from her fist, and he still remembered betraying her trust in favour of following Sylvie out of Roxxcart.
And yet… Loki remembered it was B–15 who freed both Sylvie and himself from Renslayer’s clutches in the Time Keepers’ chambers. It was B–15 who armed Sylvie with the very sword that would ultimately unmask the truth behind the TVA’s most guarded secret.
So, perhaps more out of curiosity than anything else, he made his choice and took her hand.